Chapter VII: Cawnpore, 1809-1810 (2)

No dreams nor visions excited in the delirium of a raging fever
can surpass these realities. These devotees vary in age and
appearance: they are young and old, male and female, bloated and
wizened, tall and short, athletic and feeble; some clothed with
abominable rags; some nearly without clothes; some plastered
with mud and cow-dung; others with matted, uncombed locks
streaming down to their heels; others with heads bald or scabby,
every countenance being hard and fixed, as it were, by the
continual indulgence of bad passions, the features having become
exaggerated, and the lips blackened with tobacco, or blood-red
with the juice of the henna. But these and such as these form
only the general mass of the people; there are among them still
more distinguished monsters. One little man generally comes in a
small cart drawn by a bullock; his body and limbs are so
shrivelled as to give, with his black skin and large head, the
appearance of a gigantic frog. Another has his arm fixed above
his head, the nail of the thumb piercing through the palm of the
hand; another, and a very large man, has his ribs and the bones
of his face externally traced with white chalk, which, striking
the eye in relief above the dark skin, makes him appear, as he
approaches, like a moving skeleton. When Mr. Martyn collected
these people he was most carefully watched by the British
authorities.

Shall anyone say that the missionary chaplain's eighteen months' work among this mixed multitude of the poor and the dishonest was as vain as he himself, in his humility, feared that it was? 'Greater works' than His own were what the Lord of Glory, who did like service to man in the Syria of that day, promised to His believing followers.

On the wall which enclosed his compound was a kiosk, from which some young Mussulman idlers used to look down on the preacher, as they smoked their hookahs and sipped their sherbet. One Sunday, determined to hear as well as see, that they might the more evidently scoff, they made their way through the crowd, and with the deepest scorn took their place in the very front. They listened in a critical temper, made remarks on what they heard, and returned to the kiosk. But there was one who no longer joined in their jeering. Sheikh Saleh, born at Delhi, Persian and Arabic moonshi of Lucknow, then keeper of the King of Oudh's jewels, was a Mussulman so zealous that he had persuaded his Hindu servant to be circumcised. But he was afterwards horrified by the treachery and the atrocities of his co-religionists in the Rajpoot State of Joudhpore, whither he had gone. He was on his way back to his father at Lucknow when, on a heart thus prepared, there fell the teaching of the English man of God as to the purity of the Divine law and salvation from sin by Jesus Christ.

Eager to learn more of Christianity from its authoritative records, he sought employment on the translating staff of the preacher, through a friend who knew Sabat. He was engaged to copy Persian manuscripts by that not too scrupulous tyrant, without the knowledge of Martyn or any of the English. On receiving the completed Persian New Testament, to have it bound, he read it all, and his conversion by the Spirit of God, its Author, was complete. He determined to attach himself to Martyn, who as yet knew him not personally. He followed him to Calcutta, and applied to him for baptism. After due trial during the next year he was admitted to the Church under the new name of 'Bondman of Christ,' Abdool Massee'h. This was almost the last act of the Rev. David Brown, who since 1775 had spent his life in diffusing Christian knowledge in Bengal. Abdool's conversion caused great excitement in Lucknow. Nor was this all. The new convert was sent to Meerut, when Mr. Parson was chaplain in that great military station, and there he won over the chief physician of the Rajah of Bhurtpore, naming him Taleb Massee'h. After preaching and disputing in Meerut, Abdool visited the Begum Sumroo's principality of Sardhana, where he left Taleb to care for the native Christians. They and the Sherwoods together were the means of calling and preparing several native converts for baptism, all the fruit, direct and indirect, of Henry Martyn's combined translating and preaching of the New Testament at Cawnpore.

Mrs. Sherwood writes:

We were told that Mr. Corrie might perhaps be unable to come as
far as Delhi, and the candidates for baptism became so anxious
that they set off to meet him on the Delhi road. We soon heard
of their meeting from Mr. Corrie himself, and that he was
pleased with them. Shortly afterwards our beloved friend
appeared, with tents, camels, and elephants, and we had the
pleasure of having his largest tent pitched in our compound, for
we had not room for all his suite within the house. Then for the
next week our house and grounds brought to my mind what I had
often fancied of a scene in some high festival in Jerusalem;
but ours was an assembly under a fairer, brighter dispensation.
'Here we are,' said Mr. Corrie, 'poor weary pilgrims;' and he
applied the names of 'Christian' and 'Mercy' to his wife and an
orphan girl who was with them. Dear Mr. Corrie! perhaps there
never was a man so universally beloved as he was. Wherever he
was known, from the lisping babe who climbed upon his knee to
the hoary-headed native, he was regarded as a bright example of
Christian charity and humility. On Sunday, January 31, the
baptism of all the converts but one took place. Numbers of
Europeans from different quarters of the station attended. The
little chapel was crowded to overflowing, and most affecting
indeed was the sight. Few persons could restrain their tears
when Mr. Corrie extended his hand to raise the silver curls
which clustered upon the brow of Monghul Das, one of the most
sincere of the converts. The ceremony was very affecting, and
the convert, who stood by and saw the others baptized, became so
uneasy that, when Mr. Corrie set off to return, he followed him.
For family reasons this man's baptism had been deferred, as he
hoped by so doing to bring others of his family into the Church
of God.

How delightfully passed that Sunday!--how sweet was our private
intercourse with Mr. Corrie! He brought our children many
Hindustani hymns, set to ancient Oriental melodies, which they
were to sing at the Hindu services, and we all together sang a
hymn, which I find in my Journal designated by this title:

'WE HAVE SEEN HIS STAR IN THE EAST'

In Britain's land of light my mind
To Jesus and His love was blind,
Till, wandering midst the heathen far,
Lo in the East I saw His star.
Oh, should my steps, which distant roam,
Attain once more my native shore,
Better than India's wealth by far,
I'll speak the worth of Bethlehem's star.

There is little merit in the composition of this hymn; but it
had a peculiar interest for us at that time, and the sentiment
which it professes must ever retain its interest.

Long after this the good seed of the Kingdom, as sown by Henry Martyn, continued to bear fruit, which in its turn propagated itself. In 1816 there came to Corrie in Calcutta, for further instruction, from Bareilly, a young Mohammedan ascetic and teacher who, at seventeen, had abandoned Hinduism, seeking peace of mind. He fell in with Martyn's Hindustani New Testament, and was baptized under the new name of Fuez Massee'h. Under somewhat similar circumstances Noor Massee'h was baptized at Agra. The missionary labours of Martyn at Cawnpore, followed up by Corrie there and at Agra soon after, farther resulted in the baptism there of seventy-one Hindus and Mohammedans, of whom fifty were adults. All of these, save seven, remained steadfast, and many became missionaries in their turn. The career of Abdool Massee'h closed in 1827, after he had been ordained in the Calcutta cathedral by Bishop Heber, who loved him. His last breath was spent in singing the Persian hymn, translated thus:

Beloved Saviour, let not me
In Thy kind heart forgotten be!
Of all that deck the field or bower,
Thou art the sweetest, fairest flower!

Youth's morn has fled, old age comes on.
But sin distracts my soul alone;
Beloved Saviour, let not me
In Thy kind heart forgotten be.

As from Dinapore Martyn sought out the moulvies of Patna, so from Cawnpore he found his way to Lucknow There, after he had baptized a child of the Governor-General's Resident, he met the Nawab Saadut Ali, and his eyes for the first time beheld one who had full power of life and death over his subjects. He visited the moulvies, at the tomb of Asaf-ood-Dowla, who were employed to read the Koran constantly. 'With them I tried my strength, of course, and disputed for an hour; it ended in their referring me for an answer to another.'

Toil such as Martyn's, physical and mental, in successive hot seasons, in such hospitals and barracks as then killed off the British troops and their families, and without a decent church building, would have sacrificed the healthiest in a few years. Corrie had to flee from it, or he would never have lived to be the first and model Bishop of Madras. But such labours, such incessant straining of the voice through throat and lungs, acting on his highly neurotic constitution, and the phthisical frame which he inherited from his mother, became possible to Henry Martyn only because he willed, he agonised, to live till he should give at least the New Testament to the peoples of Arabia and Persia, and to the Mohammedans of India, in their own tongues. We see him in his _Journal_, before God, spiritually spurring the sides of his intent day by day, and running like the noble Arab horse till it drops--its object gained. He had many warnings, and if he had had a wife to see that he obeyed the voice of Providence he might have outlived his hereditary tendency in such a tropical climate as that of India--a fact since proved by experience. He had narrowly escaped death at Dinapore a few months before, and he knew it. But it is well that, far more frequently than the world knows, such cases occur in the missionary fields of the world. The Brainerds and the Martyns, the Pattesons and the Hanningtons, the Keith-Falconers and the Mackays--to mention some of the dead only--have their reward in calling hundreds to fill their places, not less than the Careys and the Livingstones, the Duffs and the Wilsons, the Frenches and the Caldwells. To all who know the tropics, and especially the seasons of India, the dates that follow are eloquent.

_1809, May 29._--The East has been long forsaken of God, and
depravity in consequence more thoroughly wrought into them. I
have been very ill all this week, the disorder appearing in the
form of an intermittent. In the night cold sweats, and for about
five hours in the day head-ache and vertigo. Last night I took
some medicine, and think that I am better, though the time when
the fever has generally come on is not yet arrived. But I hardly
know how to be thankful enough for this interval of ease.

_September 25._--Set out at three in the morning for Currah, and
reached it on the 26th in the morning, and married a Miss K. to
Mr. R.; the company was very unpleasant, so after passing the
night there, I set out and travelled all day and night, and
through Divine mercy arrived at home again on the 28th, but
excessively fatigued, indeed almost exhausted. At night with the
men, my whole desire was to lie low in the dust. 'Thou hast left
thy first love,' on which I spoke, was an awful call to me, and
I trust in God I shall ever feel it so.

_November 19._--Received a letter from Mr. Simeon, mentioning
Sarah's illness; consumption has seized her, as it did my mother
and sister, and will carry her off as it did them, and now I am
the only one left. Oh, my dear Corrie, though I know you are
well prepared, how does nature bleed at the thought of a beloved
sister's drooping and dying! Yet still to see those whom I love
go before me, without so much as a doubt of their going to
glory, will, I hope, soothe my sorrow. How soon shall I follow?
I know it must be soon. The paleness and fatigue I exhibit after
every season of preaching show plainly that death is settled in
my lungs.

_1810, April 9._--From the labours of yesterday, added to
constant conversation and disagreement with visitors to-day, I
was quite exhausted, and my chest in pain.

_April 10._--My lungs still so disordered that I could not meet
my men at night.

_April 15._ (Sunday.)--Preached to the Dragoons on the parable
of the pounds. At the General's on Luke xxii 22. With the native
congregation I strained myself greatly in order to be heard, and
to this I attribute the injury I did myself to-day. Attempted
the usual service with my men at night, but after speaking to
them from a passage in Scripture, was obliged to leave them
before prayer.

_April 16._--Imprudently joined in conversation with some dear
Christian friends to-night, and talked a great deal; the pain in
the chest in consequence returned.

_May 12._--This evening thrown with great violence from my
horse: while he was in full gallop, the saddle came off, but I
received no other injury but contusion. Thus a gracious
Providence preserves me in life. But for His kindness I had been
now dragging out a wretched existence in pain, and my blessed
work interrupted for years perhaps.

Henry Martyn was too absorbed in the higher life at all times to be trusted in riding or driving. Mrs. Sherwood writes:

I often went out with him in his gig, when he used to call
either for me or Miss Corrie, and whoever went with him went at
the peril of their lives. He never looked where he was driving,
but went dashing through thick and thin, being always occupied
in reading Hindustani by word of mouth, or discussing some text
of Scripture. I certainly never expected to have survived a
lesson he gave me in his gig, in the midst of the plain at
Cawnpore, on the pronunciation of one of the Persian letters.

All through his Cawnpore life, also, the wail of disappointed love breaks from time to time. On Christmas day, 1809, he received, through David Brown as usual, a letter 'from Lydia, containing a second refusal; so now I have done.' On March 23, 1810, Mr. Steven's letter reached him, reporting the death of his last sister. 'She was my dear counsellor and guide for a long time in the Christian way. I have not a relation left to whom I feel bound by ties of Christian fellowship, and I am resolved to form no new connection of a worldly nature, so that I may henceforward hope to live entirely, as a man of another world.' Meanwhile he has received Lydia Grenfell's sisterly offer, to which he thus replies in the first of eleven letters, to one who had sunk the lover in the Christian friend, as was possible to two hearts so far separated and never to meet again in this world. But she was still his 'dearest.'

TO LYDIA GRENFELL

Cawnpore: March 30, 1810.

Since you kindly bid me, my beloved friend, consider you in the
place of that dear sister whom it has pleased God in His wisdom
to take from me, I gratefully accept the offer of a
correspondence, which it has ever been the anxious wish of my
heart to establish. Your kindness is the more acceptable,
because it is shown in the day of affliction. Though I had heard
of my dearest sister's illness some months before I received the
account of her death, and though the nature of her disorder was
such as left me not a ray of hope, so that I was mercifully
prepared for the event, still the certainty of it fills me with
anguish. It is not that she has left me, for I never expected
to see her more on earth. I have no doubt of meeting her in
heaven, but I cannot bear to think of the pangs of dissolution
she underwent, which have been unfortunately detailed to me with
too much particularity. Would that I had never heard them, or
could efface them from my remembrance. But oh, may I learn what
the Lord is teaching me by these repeated strokes! May I learn
meekness and resignation. May the world always appear as vain as
it does now, and my own continuance in it as short and
uncertain. How frightful is the desolation which Death makes,
and how appalling his visits when he enters one's family. I
would rather never have been born than be born and die, were it
not for Jesus, the Prince of life, the Resurrection and the
Life. How inexpressibly precious is this Saviour when eternity
seems near! I hope often to communicate with you on these
subjects, and in return for your kind and consolatory letters to
send you, from time to time, accounts of myself and my
proceedings. Through you I can hear of all my friends in the
West. When I first heard of the loss I was likely to suffer, and
began to reflect on my own friendless situation, you were much
in my thoughts, whether you would be silent on this occasion or
no? whether you would persist in your resolution? Friends indeed
I have, and brethren, blessed be God! but two brothers[34]
cannot supply the place of one sister. When month after month
passed away, and no letter came from you, I almost abandoned the
hope of ever hearing from you again. It only remained to wait
the result of my last application through Emma. You have kindly
anticipated my request, and, I need scarcely add, are more
endeared to me than ever.

Of your illness, my dearest Lydia, I had heard nothing, and it
was well for me that I did not.--Yours most affectionately,

H. MARTYN.

To David Brown he wrote, 'My long-lost Lydia consents to write to me again;' and in three weeks he thus addresses to Lydia herself again a letter of exquisite tenderness:

TO LYDIA GRENFELL

Cawnpore: April 19, 1810.

I begin my correspondence with my beloved Lydia, not without a
fear of its being soon to end. Shall I venture to tell you that
our family complaint has again made its appearance in me, with
more unpleasant symptoms than it has ever yet done? However,
God, who two years ago redeemed my life from destruction, may
again, for His Church's sake, interpose for my deliverance.
Though, alas! what am I that my place should not instantly be
supplied with far more efficient instruments? The symptoms I
mentioned are chiefly a pain in the chest, occasioned, I
suppose, by over-exertion the two last Sundays, and
incapacitating me at present from all public duty, and even from
conversation. You were mistaken in supposing that my former
illness originated from study. Study never makes me
ill--scarcely ever fatigues me--but my lungs! death is seated
there; it is speaking that kills me. May it give others life!
'Death worketh in us, but life in you.' Nature intended me, as I
should judge from the structure of my frame, for
chamber-council, not for a pleader at the Bar. But the call of
Jesus Christ bids me cry aloud and spare not. As His minister, I
am a debtor both to the Greek and the barbarian. How can I be
silent when I have both ever before me, and my debt not paid?
You would suggest that energies more restrained will eventually
be more efficient. I am aware of this, and mean to act upon this
principle in future, if the resolution is not formed too late.
But you know how apt we are to outstep the bounds of prudence
when there is no kind of monitor at hand to warn us of the
consequences.

Had I been favoured with the one I wanted, I might not now have
had occasion to mourn. You smile at my allusion, at least I hope
so, for I am hardly in earnest. I have long since ceased to
repine at the decree that keeps us as far asunder as the east is
from the west, and yet am far from regretting that I ever knew
you. The remembrance of you calls forth the exercise of
delightful affections, and has kept me from many a snare. How
wise and good is our God in all His dealings with His children!
Had I yielded to the suggestions of flesh and blood, and
remained in England, as I should have done, without the
effectual working of His power, I should without doubt have sunk
with my sisters into an early grave. Whereas here, to say the
least, I may live a few years, so as to accomplish a very
important work. His keeping you from me appears also, at this
season of bodily infirmity, to be occasion of thankfulness.
Death, I think, would be a less welcome visitor to me, if he
came to take me from a wife, and that wife were you. Now, if I
die, I die unnoticed, involving none in calamity. Oh, that I
could trust Him for all that is to come, and love Him with that
perfect love which casteth out fear; for, to say the truth, my
confidence is sometimes shaken. To appear before the Judge of
quick and dead is a much more awful thought in sickness than in
health. Yet I dare not doubt the all-sufficiency of Jesus
Christ, nor can I, with the utmost ingenuity of unbelief, resist
the reasonings of St. Paul, all whose reasons seem to be drawn
up on purpose to work into the mind the persuasion that God will
glorify Himself by the salvation of sinners through Jesus
Christ. I wish I could more enter into the meaning of this
'chosen vessel.' He seems to move in a world by himself, and
sometimes to utter the unspeakable words such as my natural
understanding discerneth not; and when I turn to commentators I
find that I have passed out of the spiritual to the material
world, and have got amongst men like myself. But soon, as he
says, we shall no longer see as in a glass, by reflected rays,
but see as we are seen, and know as we are known.

_April 25._--After another interval I resume my pen. Through the
mercy of God I am again quite well, but my mind is a good deal
distressed at Sabat's conduct. I forbear writing what I think,
in the hope that my fears may prove groundless; but indeed the
children of the East are adepts in deceit. Their duplicity
appears to me so disgusting at this moment, that I can only find
relief from my growing misanthropy by remembering Him who is the
faithful and true Witness; in whom all the promises of God are
'yea and amen'; and by turning to the faithful in
Europe--children that will not lie. Where shall we find
sincerity in a native of the East? Yesterday I dined in a
private way with ----. After one year's inspection of me they
begin to lose their dread and venture to invite me. Our
conversation was occasionally religious, but topics of this
nature are so new to fashionable people, and those upon which
they have thought so much less than on any other, that often
from the shame of having nothing to say they pass to other
subjects where they can be more at home. I was asked after
dinner if I liked music. On my professing to be an admirer of
harmony, cantos were performed and songs sung. After a time I
inquired if they had no sacred music. It was now recollected
that they had some of Handel's, but it could not be found. A
promise, however, was made that next time I came it should be
produced. Instead of it the 145th Psalm-tune was played, but
none of the ladies could recollect enough of the tune to sing
it. I observed that all our talents and powers should be
consecrated to the service of Him who gave them. To this no
reply was made, but the reproof was felt. I asked the lady of
the house if she read poetry, and then proceeded to mention
Cowper, whose poems, it seems, were in the library; but the lady
had never heard of the book. This was produced, and I read some
passages. Poor people! here a little and there a little is a
rule to be observed in speaking to them.

_April 26._--From speaking to my men last night, and again
to-day conversing long with some natives, my chest is again in
pain, so much so that I can hardly speak. Well, now I am taught,
and will take more care in future. My sheet being full, I must
bid you adieu. The Lord ever bless and keep you. Believe me to
be with the truest affection,--Yours ever,

H. MARTYN.

TO REV. T.M. HITCHINS, PLYMOUTH DOCK

Cawnpore: October 10, 1809.

My dearest Brother,--I am again disappointed in receiving no
letter from you. The last intelligence from the West of England
is Lydia's letter of July 8, 1808. Colonel Sandys has long since
ceased to write to me, and I have no other correspondent. It is
very affecting to me to be thus considered as dead by almost all
my natural relations and early connections; and at this time,
when I am led to think of you and the family to which you are
united, and have been reading all your letters over, I feel that
I could dip my pen deep in melancholy; for, strange as it may
seem to you, I love so true, that though it is now the fifth
year since I parted from the object of my affection, she is as
dear to me as ever; yet, on the other hand, I find my present
freedom such a privilege that I would not lose it for hardly any
consideration. It is the impossibility of compassing every wish,
that I suppose is the cause of any uneasiness that I feel. I
know not how to express my thoughts respecting Lydia better than
in Martial's words--_Nec tecum possum vivere nec sine te_.
However, these are not my general sentiments; it pleases God to
cause me to eat my meat with gladness, praising God. Almost
always I am without carefulness, as indeed it would be to my
shame if I were not.

My kindest remembrances attend my dearest sisters, Emma and
Lydia, as they well know. You two are such bad correspondents
that on this ground I prefer another petition for the renewal of
Lydia's correspondence,--she need not suspect anything now, nor
her friends. I have no idea that I should trouble her upon the
old subject, even if I were settled in England--for oh, this
vain world! _quid habet commodi? quid non potius laboris?_

But I never expect to see England more, nor do I expect that
though all obstacles should be removed, she would ever become
mine unless I came for her, and I now do not wonder at it,
though I did before. If any one of my sisters had had such a
proposal made to them, I would never have consented to their
going, so you may see the affair is ended between us. My wish is
that she would be scribe for you all, and I promise on my part
to send you through her an ample detail _of all my_ proceedings;
also she need not imagine that I may form another attachment--in
which case she might suppose a correspondence with an unmarried
lady might be productive of difficulties,--for after one
disappointment I am not likely to try my chance again, and if I
do I will give her the earliest intelligence of it, with the
same frankness with which I have always dealt (with her).

Meanwhile, on the silent shores of South Cornwall, Lydia Grenfell was thus remembering him before God:

_1809, March 30._--My dear friend in India much upon my heart
lately, chiefly in desires that the work of God may prosper in
his hands, and that he may become more and more devoted to the
Lord. I seem, as to the future, to have attained what a year or
two since I prayed much for--to regard him absent as in another
state of existence, and my affection is holy, pure, and
spiritual for this dear saint of God; when it is otherwise, it
is owing to my looking back. Recollections sometimes intrude,
and I welcome them, alas, and act over again the past--but
Lord, Thy holy, blessed will be done--cheerfully, thankfully I
say this.

_Tregembo, July 11._--I have suffered from levity of spirit, and
lost thereby the enjoyment of God. How good then is it in the
Lord to employ means in His providence to recall His wanderer to
Himself and happiness! Such mercy belongeth unto God--and this
His care over me I will record as a testimony against myself, if
I forsake Him again and lose that sweet seriousness of mind, so
essential to my peace and safety. Though I have never (perhaps
for many hours in a day) ceased to remember my dear friend in
India, it has not of late been in a way but as I might love and
think of him in heaven. Why is it then that the intelligence of
his probable nearness to that blessed abode should distress me?
yet it did, and does so still. It is this intelligence which
has, I hope, taught that my late excessive cheerfulness was
dangerous to my soul, in weakening my hold of better and calmer
joys. I was directed, I think, to the thirty-sixth Psalm for
what I wanted on this occasion, as I was once before to the
sixty-first, and I have found it most wonderfully cheering to my
heart. The Lord, as 'the preserver of man and beast,' caused me
to exercise dependence on Him respecting the result of my
friend's illness. Then the description of the Divine perfections
drew back my wandering heart, I hope to God. The declaration of
those who trust in God being abundantly satisfied with the
fatness of His house, taught me where real enjoyment alone will
be found; but the concluding part opened in a peculiarly sweet
way to my mind: 'Thou shalt make them drink of the river of Thy
pleasures.'

_October 23._--I am under some painful forebodings respecting my
dear absent friend, and know not how to act. I am strongly
impelled to write to him, now that he is in affliction and
perhaps sickness himself--yet I dread departing from the plain
path of duty. 'O Lord, direct me,' is my cry. I hope my desire
is to do Thy will, and only Thy will. I have given him up to
Thee--oh, let me do so sincerely, and trust in Thy fatherly
care.

_1810, January 1._--Felt the necessity of beginning this year
with prayer for preserving grace. Prayed with some sense of my
own weakness and dependence on God--with a conviction of much
sin and hope in His mercy through Jesus Christ. Oh, to be Thine,
Lord, in heart and life this year! Had a remembrance of those
most dear to me in prayer, and found it very sweet to commend
them to God, especially my friend in India--perhaps not now in
India, but in heaven. Oh, to join him at last in Thy blissful
presence!

_January 24._--Heard yesterday of the marriage of Mr. John--what
a mercy to me do I feel it!--a load gone off my mind, for every
evil I heard of his committing I feared I might have been the
cause of, by my conduct ten years since--I rejoice in this event
for his sake and my own.

_February 6._--Heard at last of the safety of my friend in
India, and wrote to him--many fears on my mind as to its
propriety, and great deadness of soul in doing it--yet ere I
concluded I felt comforted from the thought of the nearness of
eternity, and the certainty that then, without any fear of doing
wrong, I should again enjoy communion with him.

_February 24._--Many sad presages of evil concerning my absent
friend, yet I am enabled to leave all to God--only now I pray,
if consistent with His will, his life may be spared, and as a
means of it, that God may incline him to return again to this
land. I never did before dare to ask this, believing the cause
of God would be more advanced by his remaining in India; but now
I pray, without fear of doing wrong or opposing the will of God,
for his return.

_March 5._--I am sensible of a very remarkable change in the
desires of my soul before God, respecting my absent friend. I
with freedom and peace now pray continually that he may be
restored to his friends and country; before, I never dared to
ask anything but that the Lord would order this as His wisdom
saw fit, and thought it not a subject for prayer. His injured
health causes me to believe that India is not the place for his
labours--and, oh, that his mind may be rightly influenced and
the Lord's will done, whether it be his remaining there or
returning.

_April 23._--Wrote to India.

_November 30._--Heard yesterday, and again to-day, from
India.[35] The illness of my friend fills me with apprehensions
on his account, and I seemed called on to prepare for hearing of
his removal. I wish to place before my eyes the blessedness of
the change to him, and, though agitated and sad, I can bear to
think of our never more beholding each other in this world. This
indeed has long been my expectation, and that he should have
left the toils of mortality for the joys of heaven should, on
his account, fill me with praise--yet my heart cannot rise with
thankfulness. I seem stupefied, insensible to any feeling but
that of anxiety to hear again and know the truth, and that my
heart could joy in God at all times; but alas! all is cold
there! Oh, return, blessed Spirit of life and peace.

_1811, March 28._--Heard from my dearest friend in India.[36]
Rose early. Found my spirit engaged in prayer, but was far ...
otherwise in reading. Such dulness and inattention as ought
deeply to abase me, vanity and a desire to appear of importance
in the school, beset me.

Corrie had been ordered from his narrow parish of Chunar to the wider field of Agra, and on his way up was directed to remain at Cawnpore to help his friend, whose physical exhaustion was too apparent even to the most careless officer. Among those influenced by both was one of the surgeons, Dr. Govan,[37] who was spared, at St. Andrews, till after the Mutiny of 1857, when in an unpublished lecture to its Literary and Philosophical Society, he thus alluded to these workers in Cawnpore:

The Hukeem and the missionary hear native opinion spoken out
with much greater freedom than the political agent, the judge,
or commandant. 'Were there many more of the _Sahibean Ungez_
(the English gentlemen) in character like the Padre Sahibs
(Corrie and Martyn), Christianity would make more progress
here,' was the unvaried testimony of the natives in their
favour.... I cannot help mentioning the results of various
conversations I had with two natives of Eastern rank and family
employed by the Venerable Mr. Corrie, afterwards Bishop of
Madras, and the Rev. Henry Martyn, in Scripture translation, and
whose assistance I had used in the study of the languages, as
they quite coincide with much which I had the opportunity of
hearing among men of still higher position in the native
educated community, when attached to the staff of the
Governor-General: 'By the decrees of God,' said the Mohammedan
noble, 'and the ubiquity of their fleets, armaments, and
commerce, it appears plainly that the European nations have
become the arbiters of the destinies of the nations of Asia. Yet
this seems to us strange in the followers of Him who taught that
His true disciples must be ready to give their cloaks also to
him who took from them their coats.' To which I had no better
reply than this, that the progress of events in the world's
history seems to us to give evidence that undoubtedly a Divine
message had been sent, both to governments and their subjects,
to which, at their peril, both must give attention. But that,
as a question of public national policy, it seemed generally
admitted and understood that the civil rulers of no nation,
Christian, Mohammedan, or Heathen, were laid under an
obligation, by their individual beliefs, to allow a country,
unable to govern itself by reason of its interminable divisions
and subjects of deadly internal strife, to be occupied and made
use of by their European or other enemies, as a means for their
own injury or destruction, for any criminal or sinful acts, done
in the building up of a nation or government. I may add that I
never heard a native of India attempt directly to impugn the
perfect justice of the British possession of India on this
ground. 'The Padre Sahib has put the subject in its true light'
(said the same Mohammedan authority) 'when he said that
Christianity had higher objects in view, in its influence on
human character, than to enforce absolute rules about meats and
drinks; for should he even induce me (which is unlikely) to
become more of a Christian than I am, believing, as I do, in the
authority of the Old Testament prophets, and in Jesus Christ as
a prophet sent by God, he will never persuade me to look upon
many articles of diet used by Christians with anything but the
most intense disgust and abhorrence, and he will assuredly find
it the same with most of these idolatrous Hindus.'

We return to Martyn's _Journal_ and _Correspondence_:

_July 8._ (Sunday.)--Corrie preached to the 53rd a funeral
sermon on the death of one of their captains. In the afternoon I
spoke to the natives on the first commandment, with greater
fluency than I have yet found. My thoughts to-day very much
towards Lydia; I began even to be reconciled to the idea of
going to England for her. 'Many are the thoughts of a man's
heart, but the counsel of the Lord, that shall stand.'

TO LYDIA GRENFELL

Cawnpore: August 14, 1810.

With what delight do I sit down to begin a letter to my beloved
Lydia! Yours of February 5, which I received a few days ago, was
written, I conceive, in considerable embarrassment. You thought
it possible it might find me married, or about to be so. Let me
begin, therefore, with assuring you, with more truth than Gehazi
did his master, 'Thy servant went no whither:' my heart has not
strayed from Marazion, or Gurlyn, or wherever you are. Five long
years have passed, and I am still faithful. Happy would it be if
I could say that I had been equally true to my profession of
love for Him who is fairer than ten thousand, and altogether
lovely. Yet to the praise of His grace let me recollect that
twice five years have passed away since I began to know Him, and
I am still not gone from Him. On the contrary, time and
experience have endeared the Lord to me more and more, so that I
feel less inclination, and see less reason for leaving Him. What
is there, alas! in the world, were it even everlasting?

I rejoice at the accounts you give me of your continued good
health and labours of love. Though you are not so usefully
employed as you might be in India, yet as that must not be, I
contemplate with delight your exertions at the other end of the
world. May you be instrumental in bringing many sons and
daughters to glory. What is become of St. Hilary and its fairy
scenes? When I think of Malachy, and the old man, and your
sister, and Josepha, etc., how some are dead, and the rest
dispersed, and their place occupied by strangers, it seems all
like a dream.

_August 15._--It is only little intervals of time that I can
find for writing; my visitors, about whom I shall write
presently, taking up much of my leisure from necessary duty.
Here follow some extracts from my _Journal_....

Here my _Journal_ must close. I do not know whether you
understand from it how we go on. I must endeavour to give you a
clearer idea of it.

We all live here in bungalows, or thatched houses, on a piece of
ground enclosed. Next to mine is the church, not yet opened for
public worship, but which we make use of at night with the men
of the 53rd. Corrie lives with me, and Miss Corrie with the
Sherwoods. We usually rise at daybreak, and breakfast at six.
Immediately after breakfast we pray together, after which I
translate into Arabic with Sabat, who lives in a small bungalow
on my ground. We dine at twelve, and sit recreating ourselves
with talking a little about dear friends in England. In the
afternoon, I translate with Mirza Fitrut into Hindustani, and
Corrie employs himself in teaching some native Christian boys
whom he is educating with great care, in hopes of their being
fit for the office of catechist. I have also a school on my
premises, for natives; but it is not well attended. There are
not above sixteen Hindu boys in it at present: half of them read
the Book of Genesis. At sunset we ride or drive, and then meet
at the church, where we often raise the song of praise, with as
much joy, through the grace and presence of our Lord, as you do
in England. At ten we are all asleep. Thus we go on. To the
hardships of missionaries we are strangers, yet not averse, I
trust, to encounter them when we are called. My work at present
is evidently to translate; hereafter I may itinerate. Dear
Corrie, I fear, never will, he always suffers from moving about
in the daytime. But I should have said something about my
health, as I find my death was reported at Cambridge. I thank
God I am perfectly well, though not very strong in my lungs;
they do not seem affected yet, but I cannot speak long without
uneasiness. From the nature of my complaint, if it deserves the
name, it is evident that England is the last place I should go
to. I should go home only to find a grave. How shall I
therefore ever see you more on this side of eternity? Well! be
it so, since such is the will of God: we shall meet, through
grace, in the realms of bliss.

I am truly sorry to see my paper fail. Write as often as
possible, every three months at least. Tell me where you go, and
whom you see and what you read.

_August 17._--I am sorry to conclude with saying that my
yesterday's boasted health proved a mistake; I was seized with
violent sickness in the night, but to-day am better. Continue to
pray for me, and believe me to be, your ever affectionate,

H. MARTYN.

_September 22._--Was walking with Lydia; both much affected, and
speaking on the things dearest to us both. I awoke, and behold
it was a dream. My mind remained very solemn and pensive; shed
some tears; the clock struck three, and the moon was riding near
her highest noon; all was silence and solemnity, and I thought
with some pain of the sixteen thousand miles between us. But
good is the will of the Lord, if I see her no more.

TO LYDIA GRENFELL

From the Ganges: October 6, 1810.

My dearest Lydia,--Though I have had no letter from you very
lately, nor have anything particular to say, yet having been
days on the water without a person to speak to, tired also with
reading and thinking, I mean to indulge myself with a little of
what is always agreeable to me, and sometimes good for me; for
as my affection for you has something sacred in it, being
founded on, or at least cemented by, an union of spirit in the
Lord Jesus; so my separation also from you produced a deadness
to the world, at least for a time, which leaves a solemn
impression as often as I think of it. Add to this, that as I
must not indulge the hope of ever seeing you again in this
world, I cannot think of you without thinking also of that
world where we shall meet. You mention in one of your letters my
coming to England, as that which may eventually prove a duty.
You ought to have added, that in case I do come, you will
consider it a duty not to let me come away again without you.
But I am not likely to put you to the trial. Useless as I am
here, I often think I should be still more so at home. Though my
voice fails me, I can translate and converse. At home I should
be nothing without being able to lift my voice on high. I have
just left my station, Cawnpore, in order to be silent six
months. I have no cough, or any kind of consumption, except that
reading prayers, or preaching, or a slight cold, brings on pain
in the chest. I am advised therefore to recruit my strength by
rest. So I am come forth, with my face towards Calcutta, with an
ulterior view to the sea. Nothing happened at Cawnpore, after I
wrote to you in September but I must look to my _Journal_.

I think of having my portrait taken in Calcutta, as I promised
Mr. Simeon five years ago. Sabat's picture would also be a
curiosity. Yesterday I carried Col. Wood to dine with me, at the
Nabob Bahir Ali's. Sabat was there. The Colonel, who had been
reading by the way the account of his conversion, in the Asiatic
and East Society Report, which I had given him, eyed him with no
great complacency, and observed in French, that Sabat might not
understand him, 'Il a l'air d'un sauvage.' Sabat's countenance
is indeed terrible; noble when he is pleased, but with the look
of an assassin when he is out of humour. I have had more
opportunities of knowing Sabat than any man has had, and I
cannot regard him with that interest which the 'Star in the
East' is calculated to excite in most people. Buchanan says, I
wrote (to whom I do not know) in terms of admiration and
affection about him. Affection I do feel for him, but
admiration, if I did once feel it, I am not conscious of it at
present. I tremble for everything our dear friends publish
about our doings in India, lest shame come to us and them.

_Calcutta, November 5._--A sheet full, like the preceding, I had
written, but the moment it is necessary to send off my letter I
cannot find it. That it does not go on to you is of little
consequence, but into whose hands may it have fallen? It is this
that grieves me. It was the continuance of my _Journal_ to
Calcutta, where I arrived the last day in October. Constant
conversation with dear friends here has brought on the pain in
the chest again, so that I do not attempt to preach. In two or
three weeks I shall embark for the Gulf of Persia, where, if I
live, I shall solace myself in my hours of solitude with writing
to you.

Farewell, beloved friend; pray for me, as you do, I am sure, and
doubt not of an unceasing interest in the heart and prayers of
your ever affectionate,

H. MARTYN.

Ordered away on six months' sick leave, Henry Martyn had the joy of once at least ministering to his soldier flock in the 'new church,' which he had induced the authorities to form out of an ordinary bungalow. Daily and fondly had he watched the preparations, reporting to Brown: 'My church is almost ready for the organ and the bell.' On Sunday, September 16, he had written:

'Rain prevented me from having any service in public; the
natives not being able to sit upon the grass, I could not preach
to them.'

On Sunday, September 30, he thus took farewell of his different congregations:

Corrie preached to the Dragoons, at nine the new church was
opened. There was a considerable congregation, and I preached
on, 'In all places where I record my name, I will come unto thee
and bless thee.' I felt something of thankfulness and joy, and
our dear friends the same. The Sherwoods and Miss Corrie stayed
with us the rest of the day. In the afternoon I preached the
Gospel to the natives for the first time, giving them a short
account of the life, death, miracles, manner of teaching, death
and resurrection of Jesus, then the doctrines of His religion,
and concluded with exhorting them to believe in Him, and taking
them to record that I had declared to them the glad tidings that
had come to us, and that if they rejected it I was clear from
their blood, and thus I bid them farewell.

Mrs. Sherwood thus describes the scene:

On the Sunday before Mr. Martyn left the church was opened, and
the bell sounded for the first time over this land of darkness.
The church was crowded, and there was the band of our regiment
to lead the singing and the chanting. Sergeant Clarke--our
Sergeant Clarke--had been appointed as clerk; and there he sat
under the desk in due form, in his red coat, and went through
his duty with all due correctness. The Rev. Daniel Corrie read
prayers, and Mr. Martyn preached. That was a day never to be
forgotten. Those only who have been for some years in a place
where there never has been public worship can have any idea of
the fearful effect of its absence, especially among the mass of
the people, who, of course, are unregenerate. Every prescribed
form of public worship certainly has a tendency to become
nothing more than a form, yet even a form may awaken reflection,
and any state is better than that of perfect deadness. From his
first arrival at the station Mr. Martyn had been labouring to
effect the purpose which he then saw completed; namely, the
opening of a place of worship. He was permitted to see it, to
address the congregation once, and then he was summoned to
depart. How often, how very often, are human beings called away,
perhaps from this world, at the moment they have been enabled to
bring to bear some favourite object. Blessed are those whose
object has been such a one as that of Henry Martyn. Alas! he was
known to be, even then, in a most dangerous state of health,
either burnt within by slow inflammation, which gave a flush to
his cheek, or pale as death from weakness and lassitude.

On this occasion the bright glow prevailed--a brilliant light
shone from his eyes--he was filled with hope and joy; he saw the
dawn of better things, he thought, at Cawnpore, and most
eloquent, earnest, and affectionate was his address to the
congregation. Our usual party accompanied him back to his
bungalow, where, being arrived, he sank, as was often his way,
nearly fainting, on a sofa in the hall. Soon, however, he
revived a little, and called us all about him to sing. It was
then that we sang to him that sweet hymn which thus begins:

O God, our help in ages past,
Our hope for years to come,
Our shelter from the stormy blast,
And our eternal home.